(no subject)

Cindy Sheehan's son died in Iraq, in the military. She wanted to speak to Bush about this, as mothers of dead soldiers have asked to speak with presidents for more than 200 years.

Bush, who is on vacation, said no.

She decided to wait him out -- in Crawford, Texas. In the hot sun by the side of the road. Since last Saturday.

Cindy says she'll stay there all month if necessary, until she meets him face to face. However if she and the others with her don't leave by Thursday, they'll be arrested as they will be considered threats to national security.

Secret Service officers are reported to be telling her and the other protesters that if they come up on the road they "may be hit by Secret Service vehicles.". Aren't there laws in Texas about threatening vehicular homicide? Or are Secret Service officers immune from prosecution by local laws? I hadn't thought we'd gone that far down the road toward establishing a Praetorian Guard. Or, is it possible that these are more Republican National Committee goons impersonating Secret Service officers, as happened in Denver when three people were kicked out of a Bush speech by fake SS officers?
- twistedchick

(no subject)

New lemurs found.

American government laying the groundwork of lies it believes necessary to justify another invasion of another sovereign country.

As james_nicoll puts it, "It's important to remember that Libertarianism isn't just about regaining the right to own Negroes. It's also about the right to own women."

Speaking of which, rural Iraq proves that hicks are the same the world 'round.

Finally, Americans have the government they asked for. For proof, just look at the new transportation bill.

A mess of thorny devil's club and salmonberries, along with an old chicken coop, surrounds the 40-year-old cabin where Mike Sallee grew up and still lives part time on southeast Alaska's Gravina Island. Sallee's cabin is the very definition of remote. Deer routinely visit his front porch, and black bears and wolves live in the woods out back. The 20-mile-long island, home to fewer than 50 people, has no stores, no restaurants and no paved roads. An airport on the island hosts fewer than 10 commercial flights a day.

"I can take off from the homestead and walk the beach for several miles before I get to any other habitation," says Sallee, a fisherman who also operates a small lumber mill. "There's two main mountain ranges on the island and a big valley of forest and muskeg."

Yet due to funds in a new transportation bill, which President Bush is scheduled to sign Wednesday, Sallee and his neighbors may soon receive a bridge nearly as long as the Golden Gate Bridge and 80 feet taller than the Brooklyn Bridge. With a $223 million check from the federal government, the bridge will connect Gravina to the bustling Alaskan metropolis of Ketchikan, pop. 8,000.

How is the bridge going to pay for itself?" asks Susan Walsh, Sallee's wife, who works as a nurse in Ketchikan. She notes that a ferry, which runs every 15 minutes in the summer, already connects Gravina to Ketchikan. "It can get us to the hospital in five minutes. How is this bridge fair to the rest of the country?"

The Gravina Bridge is one of a record 6,371 special projects, or "earmarks," in the Transportation Equity Act, a six-year $286 billion bill that rivals the recent energy bill in its homage to the pork barrel. No politician better flaunts an ability to bring home the bacon than Alaska's Don Young. As chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and Alaska's lone congressional representative for 32 years, the elder statesman wrangled $941 million for Alaska in the bill, making Alaska, the nation's third least populated state, the fourth-biggest recipient of transportation funds. The money for the bill is fed by a gas tax at the pump, but this slush fund isn't redistributed to all Americans equally: The bill spends $86 per person on a national average; it spends an estimated $1,500 on every Alaskan.